Thursday, July 24, 2008

The Song Festival

So the Song Festival is now ancient history; weeks have passed. But such is the distinctly unbloglike publishing schedule of the Holla. In any case, our correspondent managed to attend three events: A dance performance in the hockey arena, which was not unlike really professional square dancing; A concert where the greatest stars of Latvian music played updated versions of folk songs, including one set to the Marimba - the national instrument of Guatemala; and the dress rehearsal for the closing concert.

The closing concert itself was a tough ticket to get, but from watching on TV, it wasn't too terribly different from the rehearsal. The point was the same - a choir of 12,000 participants singing traditional Latvian songs, some merely pleasant, and some downright moving. Unfortunately, the photo department's camera was deemed "professional" and therefore not allowed into the concert. There was no internet handy to show them just how unprofessional this publication actually is, so we went armed only with the camera on our snazzy new Euro mobile phone. We captured some pictures of the 12,000 person choir that we are now unable for the life of us to get off the phone and onto the internet. So, if you ever visit, we'll show you the pictures on the phone. Or, you could check out the pictures taken by the official Song Festival photographers here and here to get a view of the giant stage they've built for a choir that big.

Anyway, singing is seriously a big deal here. It's really striking how strongly the Latvians feel singing is tied to their culture; and not pop-star singing, but communal singing by the people. There were lots of young people participating in the group singing of folk songs, and from what I could gather, not under duress.

And it is a powerful tradition. The first Song Festival happened in 1873. More recently, the Baltics' independence from the Soviet Union came in what is sometimes known as "The Singing Revolution." Gathering together to sing patriotic or traditional songs was an important part of the popular protest against Soviet rule, perhaps most famously in Estonia, but also importantly in Latvia and Lithuania. We consider ourselves very fortunate to have arrived just in the nick of time to see the current manifestation of this tradition. Book your tickets now for the next one in 2013.

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Guatemala? Rio de Janeiro? Huh?

This journal once chronicled the experience of a low-level American diplomat living in Guatemala. Then he went to Latvia, and Afghanistan, and then back "home" to Washington, DC for a bit. He is now serving in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. If you are one of the few people of no blood relation to the authors who has come here in search of Guatemalan content, here are a few choices from the archives that we like:

In Afghanistan, the photographic opportunities were often limited to what we could sneak with a point-and-shoot camera out the bulletproof window of a speeding SUV. But sometimes we got out and about. A few favorites from that tour:

We've also vacationed aggressively in each region we've been posted in, and taken some epic home leave trips, usually leading to better photos than those where we were posted. Those photos are included in the blog, but somehow holiday snaps seem beneath this sidebar.